


there is love in your body

by troiing



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:00:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23481340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troiing/pseuds/troiing
Summary: Prompt fills for Yennaia, cleaned up and ported over from tumblah. Mixed bag - ratings and prompts in the chapter titles!
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 85
Kudos: 185





	1. jealous kiss (T)

**Author's Note:**

> mistakeexperience asked for "forceful kiss out of envy/jealousy"

Yennefer hates balls. She always has. Oh, she loves fine things, and she loves making a scene, being the centre of attention (and Yennefer has never, since her initiation, had difficulty finding a way to draw all eyes to her), but the pageantry of these affairs has been dull beyond measure since the year after she stepped into Virfuril’s court. At first, she had found the abundance of fine foods and pretty people fascinating and their behaviors amusing. Now she finds all such events irritating on the best of days.

But Tissaia is here, so Yennefer is also. Watching.

She has learned Tissaia’s secret dichotomy at such events—the gowns and smiles she wears to charm. She is at home here, perfectly so, but it is all business, no real pleasure.

The dress she wears is as revealing as Tissaia’s gowns get: a neckline shaped in a soft V, just low enough to suggest the shadow of cleavage without actually revealing it. She wears no collar, of course: she never wears a collar when she comes to charm. No, no, the high collars that hide her neck like armour are reserved for Aretuza’s halls, or for displays of power elsewhere. Instead, impossibly, the whole of the hall has been treated to the barest view of her scapulae.

Usually, her chignon moves down with her neckline like another piece of armour, but tonight her hair is gathered at the back of her head, leaving the entirety of her neck and throat utterly exposed. Her smile is bright, disarming, and entirely false.

Not that anyone who doesn’t know her will see it for what it is.

And that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? That Tissaia can captivate a room without trying. That she can enchant and beguile on the narrowest whim, with the right tools—most of which are forever at her disposal.

And she _is_ enchanting—it’s what she came for—floating around a noblewoman Yennefer does not know as if in an elaborate courtship ritual. It may as well be. Her lashes flutter, and her smile is ready. She leans in to the other woman’s space, a hand placed casually on her arm, tilting her chin upward to speak close to her ear, and the noblewoman hovers close.

Rationally, Yennefer knows that this is part of the game, and that Tissaia means none of it. Irrationally, she’d like to snatch Tissaia away from the other woman and show the room what her lips alone can do to the pale expanse of Tissaia’s neck.

It would be fine if it were a man—the charming of _men_ , the turning of tables against them with wit and grace, is their bread and butter, and a _man_ has nothing to offer Tissaia. But it’s a woman, stunning in her middle-age. Her face is fine and sharp, her gown elegant and slightly provocative in the way it clings to her hips. There’s something disarming about her eyes.

Yennefer hates her.

Tissaia casts glances in Yennefer’s direction, of course. As the night wears on, a subtle, _real_ smile begins to quirk at the edge of her lips, and yes, it even lights in her eyes. But although it is real, Yennefer is not entirely certain what it means. Victory, she thinks. Hopes. Victory, and an early retirement from this ridiculous affair. 

Finally, _finally_ she disengages from the noblewoman, and Yennefer marks her movements as she meanders through the crowds towards the exit. Nearly there, she turns, eyes traversing the room. A few men stand between them, but Tissaia must see her, for she arches back just a little, catches her eye, and the barest movement of her head says: _follow_.

Yennefer winds her way through the crowd and into the corridor, where she finds Tissaia moving at an unusually relaxed pace. Another corridor veers off to the right not a meter ahead of them. 

Yennefer breezes past, taking Tissaia by the arm as she does and practically dragging her around the corner. In an instant, Tissaia’s back is against the wall, Yennefer’s hands on her hips to pin her there. Tissaia gasps softly when Yennefer presses in, but when their lips meet in a rough, hungry kiss she yields almost immediately, head tilted back against stone, lips parted, body arching up into Yennefer’s.

Yennefer wrenches away, lets her lips traverse Tissaia’s throat hungrily as Tissaia pants slightly, the muscles and tendons of her neck shifting under Yennefer’s searching mouth.

“ _Mine_ ,” Yennefer growls, dragging her lower teeth up along Tissaia’s neck, towards her pulse point.

Tissaia begins to laugh, but it’s giddy and pitched a little high, an almost mad sound that makes Yennefer press all the closer, hands travelling up to Tissaia’s waist as her hips roll forward, pressing Tissaia’s body all the more firmly into the wall.

“My dear, was there ever any question?” Tissaia asks as soon as she’s able, voice husky and eyes dark.

Yennefer does not answer. Instead, she brings one hand up to cradle the back of Tissaia's head, smirks wickedly, and opens a portal in the wall behind her.


	2. kiss on the nose (G)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br3ndamag3 requested: nose kiss without a motive
> 
> Albeit... there is definitely a motive, and it is _Yennefer riling Tissaia up_.

It’s not often that Yennefer wakes before Tissaia. The sun hasn’t quite begun to rise yet, but the sky outside brightens just a little. Tissaia breathes softly, evenly, behind her; when Yennefer rolls onto her back and turns to face her, she finds her still sleeping lightly, the cames* of the window casting subtle, misshapen shadows across her face in the pre-dawn twilight.

The movement incites a muffled complaint from the still-sleeping sorceress, so Yennefer stills, watching, and Tissaia goes quiet again. Quietly rolling onto her side, watching Tissaia carefully for signs of disturbance, Yennefer settles her head and takes the rare opportunity to study Tissaia in this new and fleeting light. The sharp line of her jaw. The arc of her brow. The shadowy cleft of her chin. The bow of her mouth, arched downward but for the edge of her lips, ever curled slightly upward, smile or no.

As the light increases, Tissaia begins to stir again. Yennefer reaches out, letting her hand hover over Tissaia’s face. And then, on a whim, she brushes one finger down the length of her nose with a feather’s touch.

Tissaia shifts, raising an arm to swat at the offending presence; Yennefer lifts her hand away, biting down on her lower lip to stifle a laugh as Tissaia settles again. She repeats the motion, and Tissaia’s eyes open. Yennefer can’t keep from laughing at her disconcerted look, and Tissaia turns her head to frown at her, brows furrowed.

“You have an adorable nose,” Yennefer says before Tissaia can speak, swallowing back her laughter long enough to speak the words and offer the other woman a broad grin.

Tissaia, for her part, does not look amused. “Who are you and what have you done with Yennefer?” she asks dryly, voice catching in her throat from disuse.

“ _Hmm_ ,” Yennefer replies noncommittally, inching her hand towards Tissaia’s face again for the sheer pleasure of riling her up.

“Yennefer never wakes before dawn,” Tissaia reasons, voice clearer now. “And she does _not_ ”—she’s quick, surprisingly so—quicker than Yennefer; snatches her wrist and holds it tight before Yennefer has quite managed to touch her again—“touch my face while I’m sleeping.”

“How do you suppose you know that?” Yennefer asks, tugging her arm back towards herself. But Tissaia is stronger than she looks, clings to her so tightly, held close against her chest, that she actually rolls towards Yennefer when Yennefer pulls away, struggling the whole way.

So Yennefer does the only sensible thing: she cranes her neck suddenly towards Tissaia while the other woman’s fingers are still locked tight around her wrist, and plants a playful kiss on the tip of her nose.

Tissaia blinks, startled by the nonsensical display of affection, flustered, cheeks pinking.

“And you’re _precious_ when you blush,” Yennefer can’t resist adding with a smirk.

“You’ve gone mad,” Tissaia says, freeing Yennefer’s wrist, and pushing herself upright in one smooth movement.

Yennefer takes hold of her elbow before she can move too far away. “No you don’t," she says, thumb stroking absently at Tissaia's arm. "It’s, what, three hours before you teach today?” At Tissaia’s noncommittal grunt of response, Yennefer gives her best pout. “Stay with me?”

If Tissaia rolled her eyes any harder, she might lose them in the back of her skull. But her mouth pulls into the tiniest of indulgent smiles, and after a moment she lies back again, face close to Yennefer’s.

“Do _not_ touch my nose,” she warns.

Yennefer purses her lips, and doesn’t quite hold back a laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * _Cames_ are the metal or foil pieces between different glass panes in decorative windows.


	3. kiss out of love (T)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anon requested: kiss out of love
> 
> aka, Tissaia is as romantic she'll ever be.

Tissaia wakes with the dawn. Waves crash. Gulls cry. And Yennefer, bless her, snores.

It’s not a disruptive snore, mind—more a low rustle from where she lies, stretched out on her back with a pillow tucked under the crook of her elbow, half-covering her face. How she came to be in such a position (and how she's managed to avoid smothering herself) is a mystery, but Tissaia feels her lips tugging upward just a little regardless.

She is not accustomed to smiling. She is even less accustomed to waking with another body in her bed.

She’s becoming rather fond of both, despite herself.

Turning her face back towards the ceiling, Tissaia blinks against the morning light, taking stock of her body. She’s a little stiff. A little warm. She arches back, pressing her shoulders back into the mattress, but the twinge in her left shoulder persists.

Shifting the sheets to roll to her stomach, Tissaia shivers pleasantly at the cool air against her back and nudges the pillows out of the way with her forearm. Settling on her elbows, forehead tilted against her wrists, she rolls her shoulders back, sighing relief at the stretch. Yennefer moans a quiet complaint in her sleep.

Tissaia watches her for a moment, but Yennefer doesn’t stir. So she moves a little closer to her, finding a comfortable position with her weight on her forearms, and she watches. Watches her eyelids flutter, her breast rise and fall. The twitch of her mouth. The occasional flare of her nostrils. 

Yennefer is beautiful. In the way that all Sorceresses are beautiful, yes; she had suffered Giltine’s arts, after all—and _suffered them_ more than any. But there is something else about her, an amalgamation of other things that leaves Tissaia gazing at her where she sleeps, drinking her in. The black hair falling softly against her shoulder; the fingers curled loosely by her hip; the haphazard way the bedclothes tangle around her leg.

When she wakes, it's sudden: she jerks, and knocks the pillow previously lodged against her elbow to the floor as she reaches to scud the sleep from her eyes with her palm, groaning as she does so. Tissaia catches herself in another smile as Yennefer’s eyes search her face.

“Morning,” Yennefer says, with the tiniest, most self-satisfied smirk Tissaia has ever witnessed.

“Good morning,” Tissaia echoes, moving her hand just a little, stroking the backs of her fingers against Yennefer’s shoulder.

“Are you watching me sleep?” Her voice is cajoling, and there’s a glint in her eye. She looks like the cat who got the cream, catching Tissaia in the act.

Tissaia grunts noncommittally, but she rocks her weight to the side, resting her left arm against Yennefer’s body and thumbing her chin. “You were snoring,” she observes, teasing.

“I was not.” Yennefer looks slightly incensed at the accusation. Still, she does not move.

Tissaia’s lips quirk upward; she cannot help it. “You were,” she murmurs. “It’s what you get for sleeping in odd positions.”

“Hmph.”

Laughing quietly, Tissaia shifts again, close enough to guide Yennefer’s face towards her own. Close enough to lean in, and press a rare, chaste kiss to her lips.

When she withdraws, Yennefer lifts her head, chasing the kiss, and Tissaia sees her intent in the parting of her lips and the white of her teeth. She leans back, palm outstretched against Yennefer’s chest, pressing her gently but firmly back down toward the bed.

“Oh, no,” she says, pointedly ignoring Yennefer’s pout. “Not until your breath is significantly fresher than it is now.”

Yennefer laughs at that, no hesitation. Bright and warm, mischief and joy in her eyes. “I could say the same for you,” she says, but when Tissaia smirks and leans a little closer again, the kiss Yennefer presses to the corner of her lips is soft and sweet, barely more than a peck.

Tissaia tilts her head, closing her eyes as she nudges her nose gently against Yennefer’s.

“Good morning,” she repeats, quietly, warmly. Because it _is_ very, _very_ good.


	4. eyelid kiss (T)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An anon asked for eyelid kisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tbh this is less shippy, more book (and in one aspect, game) canon-y (with clear liberties taken), but read it how you want. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> Tissaia is apparently Aragorn?
> 
> CW for character death

The injured lie scattered on cots around the room - too few, far too few, yet not one of the surviving mages of the Hill unharmed by the battle. Tissaia does for them what she does best: she takes control.

She takes control, and she does not think of Lytta Neyd or of Vanielle, cut down mercilessly by the Nilfgaardian army. She does not think of Yennefer or Triss, missing from their ranks, likely dead too. She thinks only of Sabrina, soaked with blood. Of Philippa, and the gash torn deep into her frame.

Word comes of a shock of red hair on a body found amongst the dead, the face and half the torso branded and burned beyond recognition, but if it is red, true red, it can only be one person.

She does not dwell.

She tends to the wounded with bitter herbs. She kisses their brows, breathes magic against their skin. One by one, they stir. One by one, they begin their paths towards healing, towards wholeness.

Later, much later, when most of her patients have improved enough to retire out of the infirmary and to their own rooms, a disturbance in the hall draws Tissaia from her vigil. Three armed men from Gors Velen clatter and stomp their way in, hauling along a blubbering, half-mad mage in their wake, her violet eyes wide and searching, pupils and irises alike clouded with film.

“Sit her there,” Tissaia says, gesturing to an empty cot, voice steady, expression carefully blank.

“Tissaia?” Yennefer asks desperately, interrupting her own nonsense to cast her wild gaze off in the direction of the voice. “Tissaia?”

“The same,” Tissaia murmurs, raising a hand as one of the men wrestles Yennefer down to the bed. She cows the man with a dangerous look, and all three have withdrawn from the room before she even makes it across to Yennefer’s bedside, the words “ _Hush, child_ ,” soft on her lips.

Yennefer stills, stupefied by the spell as Tissaia places her hands on Yennefer’s arms, guiding her back onto the cot with gentle, single-minded efficiency. “Tell me what happened.”

Struggling to bring the right thoughts, the right words, to the surface, Yennefer’s throat bobs as a servant brings a bowl, fragrant with the clean smell of herbs, to Tissaia. She sets it down, takes a rag, begins to clean the soot and dirt from Yennefer’s face.

“Tor Lara. The portal.”

“It is open,” Tissaia says in confirmation, understanding without asking more that Yennefer had attempted to portal onto Thanedd, thinking Benavent's portal closed, or perhaps that she could overcome its unstable magic. That she had met with some ill fate in the process, and found herself in Gors Velen - whether intentionally or by accident - instead, needs not be said.

She wrings out the rag, re-wets it. The charmed water remains clear.

“Fringilla.” Yennefer’s voice quavers in spite of the spell. Tissaia lifts her head, smooths the hair strewn upon the pillow, arranging it carefully, bit by bit, as Yennefer works around her heavy tongue. “Blinded me.”

At that moment, the same girl appears with a calabash. Temporarily satisfied with Yennefer’s cleanliness, Tissaia stretches a hand for the vessel. “Close your eyes,” she orders, not unkindly, dipping the fingers of one hand, then the other, into the liquid within as Yennefer obeys, lips moving in silent complaint.

Tissaia touches Yennefer’s eyes softly then, brushes her fingers lightly from brow down to her cheekbone, then shifts, gliding her thumbs across the lids. Bending, she presses a kiss to one damp lid, then the other, murmuring in Elder between touches.

“Open your eyes,” she says gently, withdrawing, already clearing the calabash away, handing it back to the servant.

Yennefer’s eyes meet hers with recognition, a quiet, strangled noise that might be a sob caught in her throat.

“Quiet now; I have you,” Tissaia assures, bringing the cloth back to Yennefer’s face, clearing a previously-missed smear of soot from her jaw. “Be still and rest.”


	5. kiss in public (G)

Yennefer is not supposed to be here.

No, no, that’s not true. It’s not so much that Yennefer _shouldn’t_ be here, nor even that she wasn’t invited. It’s just that she said she wasn’t coming. Very likely, to the relief of most everyone involved.

But she’s bored, and there’s the promise of wine and those delightful little pastries the kitchens reserve for nights like this, and there are all sorts of people to annoy.

Namely, one Tissaia de Vries, Arch-Mistress of Aretuza.

Ignoring, of course, the fact that Yennefer can annoy her quite literally any time she likes; the idea of doing it here is just so delightful she can’t resist.

And so, she sweeps into the room in a gown which, as is her custom, leaves little to the imagination. Sleek and dark, sheer around the shoulders and neckline, and hardly what one would call “in fashion.” Tissaia, of course, is the picture of it. Not the common fashion of the masses in their endless bolts of velvet, of course - Tissaia, by contrast, is all light, flowing, and ethereal - but still deeply indicative of the favoured shape and cut. Yennefer would scoff, if she weren’t so damn beautiful (and if Yennefer weren’t so damnably in love with her).

She takes a goblet from a tray and is halfway through the wine by the time she drops the barest of curtsies in front of Tissaia. The woman gives her a momentary look of surprise before schooling her expression, a brow arching at Yennefer’s outstretched hand. There’s a glint in her eyes and a half-formed question in her mind when she extends her own hand to Yennefer.

Yennefer smirks as she takes the offered hand, lifting it to her lips to press a soft kiss to the backs of Tissaia’s fingers.

“Arch-Mistress,” she says with false decorum.

Tissaia nods politely, schooling her expression again into a pleasant look - it’s all she can do. But her eyes are sharp, amusingly piercing as she reaches out with her mind.

_‘Must you always cause a scene?’_

Yennefer smirks all the broader as she takes a step back, sipping her wine with a suggestive lift of her brows.

_‘You know I must.’_


	6. kiss where it hurts (M)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An anon requested a kiss "where it hurts. Yennaia, in the aftermath of a battle where one of them got injured."
> 
> In news to no one, my brain does what it wants with prompts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-divergence for Time of Contempt, post-Thanedd coup, some vague Yen/Tissaia and Yen/Geralt poly vibes maybe
> 
> **trigger warning for attempted suicide**

work reposted [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24251818) for the sake of easily adding works to the premise, but wanted to preserve this chapter for the comments. <3


	7. doesn't realize they've been injured (T)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brazenedMinstrel & an anon requested: _doesn’t realize they’ve been injured with Yennaia_
> 
> I hereby submit, Tissaia flinging Fringilla's dimeritium powder right back at her, and she and Yen holding off Nilfgaard's army together.
> 
> There's blood.

A well-timed barrier spell sends a ricochet of grey-blue powder flying into Fringilla's face, dimeritium clawing its way through her body, poison leaching into her blood. Tissaia takes her chin into her hands, wild-eyed and darkly curious, pulse a rush in her ears as the young sorceress doubles over. She abandons her tainted gloves. Backs away. Leaves her there, writhing in the dirt.

Settles herself as she returns to the fort.

She and Yennefer stand together against Nilfgaard’s army: Yennefer in unbridled fury; Tissaia in measured rage.

They need only hold them for a little while; without their precious sorceress, it seems possible.

Lightning chains between soldiers as thunder rumbles overhead. Atmospheric pressure and the endless stream of Chaos make Tissaia's head heavy. Something whizzes by her ear. A fireball careens into the middle of a swath of soldiers, sending a dozen or more men flying. Yennefer _screams_. The sorcerer down below—Cazros, Tissaia thinks—falls back alongside them, his strength wearing thin, the blasts of force he favors—to control and to wound—weakening. The heat of the fires burning about is all-consuming.

They claim it. Reinvent it. _Use it_. 

Yennefer reaches for the heavens, reclaims Tissaia’s brewing storm for herself: channels electricity through her body and flings it at the scattered soldiers to her left with a frenzied roar. Tissaia’s whole body is alight with the energy of the waning flames in the ruins behind them when fire rains down over the soldiers breaking ranks ahead.

By the time the soldiers who remain have turned back, her own strength is all but gone with the fire in the ruins, though electricity and Chaos swirl about them still.

Tissaia pants, then seals her lips against the ash and smoke and ruin, nostrils flaring. Yennefer erupts into a manic laugh, reaching for Tissaia as she drops to her knees, hand clenched against her abdomen. Beyond her, Tissaia sees Cazros, slumped on the ground.

Tissaia kneels as smoothly as possible, but it is more like falling than kneeling. She groans as her knees hit the stone beneath them, body trembling with weakness, vision blurry. She scrubs damp from her neck, where the sweat drips and tickles, then reaches out to take Yennefer’s hand, to pull it away from her wound and examine it.

But Yennefer stirs, taking Tissaia’s fingers into her own, making a muffled noise of protest as she turns Tissaia’s hand up to reveal the fresh, red blood, bright against her soot-stained hands. “You’re bleeding,” she says, following the path of Tissaia’s hand back up to her neck, over her ear, into her hair.

Tissaia is too weak to resist the movement, but she winces when Yennefer’s fingers pass over the stinging place on the side of her head. She lifts her own hand, swatting Yennefer’s away only to grit her teeth, tears sparking in her eyes as she finds the gash. An arrow, maybe? If so, it had barely missed.

“Fuck. You’re bleeding like a sieve,” Yennefer says, her voice shaky as Tissaia presses her palm to the wound with a strangled noise, slick, warm blood gathering beneath her hand as she attempts to staunch the flow.

She can feel it now: the way it sticks in her hair, the trail it leaves down her ear and neck.

She’s going faint.

And Yennefer _shoves_ her. She falls to her hip with a yelp, catching herself on her free hand as Yennefer reaches out, scrambling beneath the hem of Tissaia’s skirt for the knife she knows is there, tucked carefully into her boot. “Sorry,” she says roughly, not sounding sorry at all as she draws the blade and pulls again at the bottom of Tissaia’s skirts. “There’s more fabric here than you need, right?”

Grunting, Tissaia reaches out, tangling her fingers in the cords in the front of Yennefer’s dress and muttering in Elder. Yennefer pauses briefly in her work, eyes widening.

“No. _No._ You _reserve_ what you have left, you—”

But the Chaos has already flowed out of Tissaia, into Yennefer, mitigating the damage to her internal organs. She’ll be safe, mostly. That’s good. Tissaia offers Yennefer a wan smile, and Yennefer scowls back, ripping a long strip of fabric free from the lining of Tissaia’s skirts.

Oh, she’s going to pay for that. Tissaia is going to be _fine_ , if only because Yennefer needs to know that she can’t just go tearing swaths of fabric out of peoples’ clothes, even if it is to make compresses to keep them from bleeding to death.

“Come on,” Yennefer insists, pulling her closer.

As her hand falls away from the side of her head, replaced with the rolled swath of cloth and Yennefer’s hand, Tissaia’s vision darkens. She teeters, then falls into Yennefer’s body and unconsciousness.


End file.
